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Health Minister and SLMC hold decisive meeting on Minimum Standards for Medical Education
A decisive and cordial meeting on the Minimum Standards for Medical Education was held on Thursday between Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne and the Sri Lanka Medical Council (SLMC), the Sunday Times learns.
This was while in a separate development on Friday, the Supreme Court granted leave to the SLMC to proceed with its appeal against a Court of Appeal ruling of January 31 ordering the SLMC to recognize the degree awarded by the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM).
The Sunday Times understands that after discussions lasting nearly three hours covering many aspects revolving around the critical issue of Minimum Standards for Medical Education, Minister Senaratne on Thursday had told the SLMC to come up with a suitable draft which should then be discussed with Health Ministry Secretary Janaka Sugathadasa and the Attorney-General’s Department.
Thereafter, he would submit it to Cabinet, the Health Minister had assured, adding that he would then proceed with Gazetting the Minimum Standards in two to three weeks.
“We agreed on most of the issues with only a few to be sorted out,” an SLMC source said, adding that they are due to meet Health Ministry Secretary Sugathadasa on Tuesday (October 3) at 2 p.m. to iron out the rest.
The formula proposed by the SLMC is that, taking into consideration the previous year’s lowest Z-score or corresponding grades required to enter the state medical faculties — which would be provided by the University Grants Commission (UGC) — the SLMC would declare the minimum entry criteria for medical education – be it state, private or foreign — for the following year.
Earlier, as the discussion commenced around 11.30 a.m. at the Health Ministry with a heavy attendance of SLMC members, Dr. Senaratne had said that he would have no objections to the Minimum Standards for Medical Education if they have been drawn up taking into consideration the world-accepted framework on how to define minimum standards.
A large number of the 22 current members of the 26-member SLMC, which has four vacancies, had attended the meeting.
The SLMC members had reiterated that the minimum entry criteria for medicine should be defined by the SLMC, as done all over the world by Medical Councils in their respective countries.
The discussion on the Minimum Standards for Medical Education, meanwhile, focused a lot on the entry criteria for admission to a medical faculty, be it state, private or foreign, it is learnt with a debate being generated over claims in certain quarters that it should be three passes at the Advanced Level (AL).
While the situation had been clarified by some SLMC members that the three passes specified by the UGC were the minimum qualifying level applicable to all streams, it had also been pointed out that the UGC prospectus itself specified a higher entry criteria for certain streams.
Two of the examples cited had been nursing where the minimum entry criteria were a Credit in Biology and two passes and for pharmacy where the requirement was a Credit in Chemistry and two passes. “This clearly shows that each stream has its own entry criteria,” the SLMC had pointed out.
Another argument put forward had been that though the UGC’s minimum qualifying level for all streams was three passes, the minimum requirement under the 40% merit quota for a student to enter a state medical faculty in 2017 was 1A and 2Bs; in 2016 it was 3Bs; and in 2015 it was 2Bs and 1C.
This was while the children of expatriates who had lived with their parents abroad for three years who were entitled to enter the local state medical faculties were required to compete for the 5% quota allocated to them by securing AL results above that of the last student who had gained entry locally under the merit quota.